Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Except for the New Year
felicitations this week, there has been no post to this blog since February of
last year. I am both amazed that it has taken me that long to get to it and
that I yet have anything to say.

Readers here in the past
will know, Reamus posts when traveling or has some strange human interest baseball
story to tell either during the World Series or Spring Training. The February
post was about the beginning of spring training and I found most of what
happened in baseball during the so-called Championship Series, except for the
mighty efforts by the Pittsburgh Pirates who achieved their first winning
season in 23 years and reached the first round of the playoffs in one year too
predictable to write. Oh, there were moments when I thought the Detroit Tigers
would prevail but either through my own ennui or because everything went
according to script without some heroic rookie or grizzled old veteran
performing way beyond their talents, the game seemed predictable last season.
Those who deserved to lose did and the best team won. The “lunchbox” team from
Boston as they like to be known with enough pitching a few remarkable moments
of drama and an adequate defense won it all. They were picked by few of the
experts but most of the savants that I drink coffee and other beverages with
everyday from the beginning and that is the way it ended. Good for them and a
yawn from me.

I enjoyed the Red Sox as a team
this year, yet I am not a member of the Red Sox Nation so can only rise to a
certain contained level of glee when they do so very well.

As for travel, there has been
little. Since the Great RV Incident of 2012 when my beloved La Coachasita rolled quietly into the
ditch by the side of the road I have been having an inner argument as to
whether I want to invest the time and money into such an endeavor again. I am
no younger and while not in any worse health I am not sure how ready I am to
outfit another van to go out and see the country, wrestle half frozen water
lines, and do the day to day things an RV requires. I miss it, I admit to that.
I miss the wonder of the things I saw once I got there and the peace that it
brought, which was almost Zen-like. Yet other endeavors have occupied me until
now and since I would never be out there in the winter, I feel no compulsion to
do it now. When you have the sort of weather I enjoy in this part of the
country and views like those posted here to wake to most days, it is hard to
leave.

Reamus and the woman who lives
here with him (who wisely forever refuses to be known as Mrs. Reamus) did take a
trip to Carmel in more conventional transportation. We visited eight of the old
Missions founded by the Spanish here in California in the 1700’s when all of
this was theirs. It was a lovely adventure, although the coming and going from
a motel every night seemed more onerous than I enjoyed. We did pretty well with
it by the sixth day but it is harder than having my “house” right behind the
driver’s seat. There is a nascent plan to go east when the spring comes to see
family and perhaps attend a reunion.

So the traveling Reamus of the
past eleven years may have posted his last small town visit while he is busy
doing other things. Writing is my great passion and I exercise it now by
writing novels. The latest was published this month (fourth book, third novel).
Not good novels, necessarily yet I
hope a good story worth a few hours of one’s time.

The last is a sequel to the one
before, The Worlds of Harry Logan.
It is a book about a man writing a book, a genre all its own now, I am told,
known as meta-fiction. It is fun to write, fun to shape characters from the misty
shadows of the imagination, live with them here for a year or so and then have
them fade back into that amorphous place. In a few months I hope to find some
new imaginary friends to share my office and I will do it all again. My
publisher finds my marketing plan for this all very strange. It consists of sending
copies to relatives, giving a few to local libraries, and mentioning it in the
header here. This is a hobby after all, not something I need to put food on the
table and doing more costs money.

So while I remain ambivalent
about recreational vehicles and plan other trips, I hope for spring training in
Arizona in two months or so. I am sure there will be
something to say about that. Meanwhile, I hope you all are staying well, warm, and continue doing
good works.